The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘Come into the fountain with me. It will cool you; soothe you.’

  ‘Erchon, I dare not.’

  ‘Koschei is not here; besides, he is occupied with Nemione’s invasion. Come with me.’ Erchon took her hot hand and led her to the edge of the fountain. ‘Look, the water dances over the mosaic! Dip your hand.’ He drew down her hand until it met the water, which hissed and turned to steam. ‘Step in.’

  Roszi entered the fountain.

  The water bubbled in the bowl and rose in a cloud of vapour, which hid Erchon and Roszi.

  ‘He has his way with her, in there,’ smiled Friendship.

  ‘Small as he is,’ Concordis added. ‘Soon, she will step out, flushed and delighted with her watery games.’

  The steam drifted up into the roof, hiding the rambling roses and the doves which perched amongst them. The cool waters of the fountain played on, but Erchon and Roszi were nowhere to be seen. Twice they had mounted, water drops, to the summit of the spouting cascade and twice been cast into the fall; they slid to the bottom of the pool and so, by a grating, back into the pipework, the conduit and the River Lytha. Erchon bobbed to the surface. I hope I shall be dry when I reach the bank, he thought, and squeezed Roszi ‘s hand. She was wet and delightful, her cast-gold hair streaming with water, her metal smile fixed and her hot, soaked, silk-clad body wholly desirable, even to the necklace of miniature toads and water marigolds which marked the seam Koschei had made to join her head and body. Erchon read Koschei’s mind and saw what his intention had been when he reconstructed Roszi. The dwarf drew her close to him and kissed her hard lips, amazed when they parted to let out a long and supple tongue, which licked him and wrapped itself tenderly about his neck.

  ‘We must land,’ he said, and disengaged himself. No ordinary woman waited for him to deliver his prize, but a witch. He should be afraid. They clambered up the riverbank and Erchon looked about him. There was no sign of Pargur.

  ‘We have been swept a long way downstream,’ he said and Roszi laughed triumphantly.

  ‘He has succeeded!’ she said. ‘Koschei has moved Castle Sehol in all its versions and synchronicities. Only yesterday he told me he would hide it from Nemione, and while you dallied with us in the Bower, he has made good his boast. He is a great magician.’

  ‘And a heartless,’ said Erchon.

  ‘I suppose your heart is very small – how could it be other in that body?’ Roszi teased.

  ‘I thought I had sent Nemione my heart,’ answered the dwarf, ‘but I feel it beating strongly. It is a foolish, fervent heart, Roszi and you are driving it with spur and lash.’

  ‘Then I have not lost all my beauty?’

  ‘Lost! You have gained colour and warmth – why, you are as hot as a salamander and heat in a woman means only one thing.’

  ‘And you, Erchon, speak pretty compliments. You are considerate and have rescued me from a long and tedious life acting as Koschei’s warming pan and rag doll. I don’t doubt that you have all your proper parts and no more.’

  ‘What do you mean, Roszi?”

  ‘Do you not know? Are Friendship, Concordis and I, Koschei’s bed-fellows, the only living souls beside himself to know? Well, I will tell you and we’ll see how the sparks fly.’

  ‘They will Roszi, they will when we come together.’

  ‘Be quiet, Erchon. You are nothing but a philanderer in little, I can see. Koschei is not a man, you know – at least, he no longer has that which distinguishes him from a woman. I do not know why, if it is magic gone wrong or because of some malady. Also, he has one female pap, at which he nourishes his misbegotten son.’

  ‘What can I do with this knowledge, Roszi? It does not disqualify him from his magician’s calling.’

  ‘Keep it in your heart with me. You may find a use for it by and by.’ Roszi’s clothing was drying on her and Erchon looked her up and down and took her hand.

  ‘Dry me, Roszi.’

  ‘I shall set you on fire!’

  ‘Then touch me just a little, here and there.’ Roszi caressed him, withdrawing her hands when his jerkin began to smoke and smoulder and his silver breastplate to burn him through the leather. ‘Less!’ he cried.

  ‘Be patient, I shall learn in no time.’ The grass flared where she stood and she breathed deeply in and stamped out the little fire. ‘That’s better. Now feel, I am quite cool, no hotter than a sun-warmed wall.’

  ‘Are you hot all through: inside?’ he asked her.

  ‘I can be as temperate as a summer’s day.’

  He looked at her again. It was useless, he could not do the witch’s bidding; he was lost, his heart and body burning for her with a fire as hot as her infernal, internal flames. His will had melted. One course was open to them: flight.

  ‘We might make our home in the mountains, where the silver lies deep in the rock,’ he said. ‘I can mine it by night and bring it to the surface to work into long chains and intricate filigrees to adorn your gold; and by day we can lie abed and please ourselves and each other. Come with me – be my love. Your talents will not go to waste when the cold comes to cover the Altaish with snow and turns their grey peaks into death-white fields.’

  ‘And never see Nemione?’

  ‘I, her faithful dwarf who only left because he believed her dead – I, Erchon, will never see Nemione again.’

  ‘We agree. Let us begin our journey then, my Silver Love, and you shall sleep tonight in the forest, beside my fire or in it if you will!’

  Hand in hand, they ran across the narrow strip of scrubland which lay between the river and the forest and vanished beneath the trees. Nothing was seen of them again in Sehol or Pargur and, fearing the wrath of the chov-hani, they left no clue or message to show which way they took. Only this is sure: that Erchon, when night fell, saw the fiery veins which glowed beneath Roszi’s buttermilk skin, the crystal flower which grew, in place of a navel, out of her belly; and that he felt the keen edges of her golden nails.

  The insurgents fired their culverin regularly. One could have set the clocks in Pargur by it if the city’s time had been subject to the ordinary laws of motion and mechanics. I could see the gun clearly from the north wall, a giant cannon many yards in length. It took near an hour to cool to a safe temperature and, when the culverineer’s gobbet of spit merely steamed instead of vaporizing in an instant, he loaded it with toothed chains and iron balls, whose circumference was equal to or greater than my magic globe, and tamped down the charge. The breached wall had been patched with pieces of its own, shattered body and the largest gaps filled with gabions. I stood tall and hallooed the perseverant rebel gunners, heard one of the Copper Dwarf’s shot whistle by me and felt his second missile, a barbed bullet of lead, plunge through the right wall of my chest and come to rest into my busy lungs. I bowed to the force of Githon’s shot and to Asmodeus and withdrew quickly from his halls. The kerchief I laid on my new wound was quickly soaked in blood; I watched it flow out of the sodden cloth, darkening my robe and dripping to the battlement, where it formed a pool. Cob should be here to feast, I thought (for, tired of his apish jests, I had sent him back to Peklo); or, had I time enough before the coming confrontation, I should collect this life-ichor and study it to see what I was made of. I breathed evenly. Knowledge of my invulnerability had made me careless of taking risks. Like one addicted to the juice of the sleep-poppy or to gross women, say, or female dwarfs, I sought violent sensation and this, of cheating Death, was the finest. I hailed my assailant,

  ‘A good shot, Githon, or a lucky one!’ For he and his fellows could not see, most likely, at what they aimed. The fragments of wall dazzled more than the original undivided crystal and, besides, the city quivers and moves in time as did my new illusions of Sehol inviolate. But folly or its sister, hope, directed them and they continued to bombard the walls with their culverin, and their pelicans, shrikes, onagers, mangonels and trebuchets while the balls from their pot-guns soared over the walls and, falling steeply to earth, buried themselves w
ithout harming my men. Under cover of the noise and dust their sappers and miners dug out trenches and began to undermine the wall near the gate.

  Their tents, many of them brilliant-hued, stood in the lee of the forest and were pitched within a bow-shot of the walls; but Nemione had raised an airy and steel-hard barrier in front of them. I saw it with my inner eye and it was a lovely, numinous thing which ordinary folk might liken to a veil of spider’s silk or an insubstantial dew-covered curtain like that which hangs athwart the eastern sky in certain auspicious seasons and seems to touch the highest rock of the utmost peak of the Altaish with one thread of its hem. I could have dispersed it there and then, but let it depend and shimmer prettily while my heart leaped without my willing it toward Nemione’s white tent. The new star which, in Pargur, they called Corbillion or Vengeance, stood high above that tent, lately visible by day as well as night; and Nemione’s flag, with its green chevron and golden hinds, flew stiffly. I imagined Nemione (for it would have been unwise to alert her by using obvious means) seated on her camp-stool within, her armour burnished and well-suited to her willowy form. And Parados there also, strong beside her and leaning on his sword while he softly discussed with his commander (in love – alas – as well as war) the implacable tactic of siege-warfare. She well knew where I was – I had no doubt of it – and I prayed Urthamma that some subtle tincture of regret coloured her knowledge. Sympathy was too much to hope for from Nemione-Militant; and she had always been that, for all her decorative speech and the succulent female flesh she revealed or else concealed with silk, feathers, fur, lace – she had scalded, scolded and baited me in our childhood and since. When night came, for she believed herself as safe as a cooped hen behind her magic barrier, she would doff her showy helmet and unbuckle her intricate, interlocking plates of silvered steel, untie the padded coat she wore beneath them and reveal her undefiled body to the servile eyes of her maid and the bold and sparkling glances of her emeralds and diamonds. The maid (I did not care to imagine her so closely) would lift her night rail, extend it on careful arms, another snow-white tent, another frail balloon, and put it on her so that she became no Amazon but a Venus in reverse, an Aphrodite reversed, sinking in the abundant foam – and poor Parados was not in the tent nor anywhere close by, exiled from her tent and made to patrol the camp or drink with his subordinates and the Copper Dwarf. Was he, though banished, yet within call? I thought so. Without her maidenhead Nemione’s strong magic was impossible and with it she was a worthy prize. I did not pity, though I envied Parados his yearning exclusion. I did not jealously crave; but I coveted the force of his desire.

  Evening had come and was darkening into night. All was quiet now, the cannon and the lesser guns put to bed beneath tarpaulins. I climbed down a ladder into the gabionage. Corinel was with me. He made a useful soldier despite his canine predilections. We found a squad of my engineers below, all gathered round a big bald-pated man from Sink Street – his name was Fuller. He was standing over one of those wide, open-backed drums the mummers use on May Day. It lay on the ground like the full moon sunk to earth or a mighty cheese. Another man placed a dried pea on it and everyone stood still. The pea jumped and bounded on the flat surface of the drum as if it were a hungry flea.

  ‘Still digging, My Lord Archmage,’ said Fuller gravely.

  ‘Can you tell the direction?’ Corinel asked.

  ‘Aye – watch the pea! Toward the Shambles, passing directly under us and nowhere near the gate as we thought. There must be dwarves among them – they’ve dug so far so quick.’

  ‘Can we not dig down and surprise them? I’ve always fancied myself a terrier!’

  Fuller grinned. ‘Have you indeed – Sir?’ he said. ‘Well then, if you have the proper claws and teeth, begin. They have dug beneath the rock and we are standing on it. ‘Twould take many charges to blast them out.’

  ‘My Lord?’ Corinel turned to me, stupid hope and a begging question on his handsome face.

  ‘Let our enemies dig, Corinel,’ I said and, addressing the engineers, ‘Let them dig, for we will catch them inside and cut them to pieces amongst the beast-carcasses in the Shambles. Any weapon greater than a sword is wasted on such cattle.’ I turned away, as if to study the packed gabions and, indeed, they had caught my eye for they made me think of traps and webs, their wickerwork stuffed as it was with gleaming lumps of shattered crystal and those sparkling toys of the nivashi, water-worn pebbles of fool’s gold from the bed of the Lytha. All that glisters – thought I; and nothing beckons greedy men so strongly as the promise of gold, the prospect of power. Parados would come willingly enough, but Nemione was proof against such enchantments.

  I took her at dead of night, blowing away her gossamer gabionage – it was a female thing and weaker than my will – and making her guard as drunk on moonshine as a fiddler’s bitch. I occupied him further with a nubile illusion. (Curious to see a grown man tup a phantom.) And Nemione? So, once, would I – enough, Koschei! She was the only one who recognized how great I was and how vulnerable. She alone knew how extraordinary was the place I had reserved for her in my grand design.

  The roar of the enemy’s shot woke Parados and he lay still, waiting for it to be rebuffed by the bulwark Nemione had made of thistledown, cobwebs and a few whispered words; but the ball passed on and felled an oak in the forest. Her magic must have failed. The air was rent by the agonized screaming of the sundered trunk and splintered boughs for many minutes before its fellows closed around the fallen tree. Then came many long sighs and crisp, leafy whispers before the bombardment resumed and slingshots and arrows began to fly across the greensward which lay between the forest and the walls of Pargur and patter against the palisades. By then, Parados had his boots on and was armed. He called Githon and Aurel to him and ran into the forest without waiting for them. There lay the oak, in line with the broken tower and a yard to the right of Nemione’s tent. He calculated the time which would pass before their cannon cooled down – enough to move Nemione to other quarters. The trees were rustling loudly though there was no wind. And maybe they feel as much as we do in their fixed innocence and seasonable beauty, he thought. Words sighed about him. He leaned sideways to catch them in his ear,

  ‘Koschei is no man becaussse, Koschei iss noo maan becaussssss …’

  and, remembering the danger and Nemione’s mortal peril, ran back to the encampment. Aurel stood on guard outside her tent, a drunk and unbuttoned soldier face-down in the grass at his feet. The navigator glanced nervously at him and, gesturing at the drunkard, said,

  ‘A fine watch!’

  ‘Githon?’ Parados asked.

  ‘Within. Hurry, my lord.’

  She was not there. Her maid stood by her bed in tears, cradling the shining helmet which, only yesterday, Nemione had worn to walk about the encampment and review the progress of the attack. Nothing else was disturbed and the imprint of Nemione’s body was still to be seen in the bed, the pillow dinted and the sheet flung neatly back without haste or panic, its lace edge just touching the lambskin on the ground.

  ‘Nemione?’ he said, fearing that the word would stick in his throat, overtaken by the tears and panic which threatened to well up.

  Another single word sufficed to answer him.

  ‘Koschei,’ said Githon.

  Parados knelt, as if he would pray. He raised both hands and beat them on the foot of the bed until they were bruised. Then, turning to the maid, he said,

  ‘How was she taken – was Koschei here himself?’

  Her tears, he thought, were enough for them both. Sarai blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes with her kerchief.

  ‘Gone, Sir; gone when I came in to call her.’

  ‘Why did you not remain here with her all night?’

  ‘She forbade me, Sir. She said that soon she would be unable to pass any night alone – she meant when you were wed, Sir.’

  Though the honestly reported words wrung him, he remained outwardly unruffled. Other words were dancing in his mind
, that unfinished phrase the trees had whispered, ‘Koschei is no man because …’ He was besieged himself, under assault by magic. How was it possible to find out the truth about Nemione’s disappearance or any other matter?

  ‘Githon,’ he said wearily, ‘what on earth – if that is where I am – should I do now?’

  ‘Use your head,’ said the dwarf brusquely. It sounded like censure and Parados replied in kind,

  ‘We are here because I used my head.’

  ‘Thought can move mountains,’ said Githon more kindly. ‘Remember the headwaters of the Sigla, Excelsior Pass –’

  Remember. Memory, good servant, solace of the solitary, creator and director of history, present action, future resolution. The Memory Palace. That would be the perfect place to hide, disguised as a memory. Seeing the little building and the ornate additions Koschei had made to it, the steps of grey-green porphyry, the brass double doors, he bowed his head and rested it on the bed-rail so that Githon, pitying him in his indecision and grief, reached out to raise him to his feet, felt the steel of his cuirass and then nothing. Like Nemione, Parados had vanished.

  Koschei was waiting for him. The magician bowed and, straightening his velvet-robed body, drew the long nails of his right hand down through his beard.

  ‘You have caught up with me at last. Welcome, Sir,’ he said, with all the courteous ceremony of the Saracen he resembled. ‘It is a beautiful day, so sunny – the song of the honey-birds is quite charming!’ Parados bowed in return.

  ‘I am delighted to be here, Archmage,’ he said. ‘And to find you at home.’

  Koschei raised both arms in a gesture which encompassed the palace and its garden.

  ‘The making of the Memory Palace and its transportation from Espmoss were the greatest achievements of my young adulthood,’ he said. ‘Nowadays of course I can move anything anywhere and conceal and reveal whatever I will. I began building the year the Sacred Ibis left the marsh. The foundations were soon dug and the footings laid. It was, after all, a small building. Many years passed before my spiritual troubles began, coinciding with the first extensions.